Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

102 Chapter 4: Climate Change 6. Citizen engagement Ireland is undertaking significant work in the area of climate action citizen engagement. The National Dialogue on Climate Action (NDCA) is a national- level citizen engagement initiative on climate action. It provides a systematic means of actively engaging stakeholders and the public with climate action across Ireland, enabling and empowering people locally and nationally. Key activities within the NDCA are the development and integration of quantitative, qualitative and experimental social and behavioural sciences to inform both the NDCA and wider climate action in Ireland. The Climate Change in the Irish Mind survey, undertaken by the EPA and Yale University using Yale University’s internationally recognised approach, is the first nationally representative survey of its kind in Ireland. The survey findings provide a clear picture of the beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences and behaviours of people in Ireland, and also provide an important means for improving people’s understanding of climate change and what each of us, and society as a whole, must do to address it. The findings also provide an evidence base to raise awareness of climate change, support engagement campaigns and inform the design of national policy and climate action. The work demonstrates that the Irish people overwhelmingly recognise the threat of climate change, feel personally affected by it and want to see real change. There was almost complete agreement (95%) that climate change is happening, and the majority of people (92%) think that climate change is caused, at least in part, by human activities. A large majority (91%) are worried about climate change, including 34% who described themselves as ‘very worried’ (O’Mahony et al. , 2024a). A majority of people in Ireland also support policies such as higher taxes on cars that use diesel or petrol (51%) and banning peat, coal and oil for home heating (59%). It is important to note that most of the people who oppose these policies do not show a consistent pattern of attitudes that differentiate them from the national average. Their opposition to the highlighted policies does not appear representative of general underlying concerns or suspicions around climate change. Rather, their concerns are specific to the policies referred to and may reflect perceptions of there being practical issues in enacting these policies. A segmentation analysis identified ‘Climate Change’s Four Irelands’, which are four distinct climate change audiences among the Irish public (O’Mahony et al. , 2024b). The four climate audiences, labelled as the ‘alarmed’, ‘concerned’, ‘cautious’ and ‘doubtful’, strongly differ in their knowledge, levels of worry and willingness to take direct action on climate change and represent a spectrum of views about climate change (Figure 4.14). Importantly, the climate change audiences are not found to be clustered in a single demographic group or region but are found to cut across all levels of Irish society. Climate scepticism is extremely rare in Ireland. Of the 4% of the Irish public who are doubtful, only about four in ten think that climate change is not happening. Many of those among the doubtful audience also express a lack of concern about climate change and feel that they do not know much about it. Figure 4.14  Climate Change’s Four Irelands Alarmed 1.3 million Highest belief in Climate Change Most Concerned Most Motivated Lowest belief in Climate Change Least Concerned Least Motivated Concerned 1.7 million Cautious 0.4 million Doubtful 0.1 million 36% 48% 12% 3% Source: O’Mahony et al. , 2024b